Interesting development no?? I found this line rather intriguing:
"The Board expects that it will be in a position to provide a further update to the market at the Company's Annual General Meeting regarding the issues leading to the resignation."
Why can't they tell us now I wonder??? And which party was it that was looking at a merger .. ESG/I&S or OIP management? If it was a merger with ESG then the former presumably ... and OIP management may not have agreed, and if with another company then the latter .. which may not have pleased ESG. then again if it were another party then we would have to informed of the approach now I would have thought .. so it must have been ESG if providing details can wait until the end of November??
Either way so far as the share price is concerned I would hazard a guess that any merger would have to be at a considerable premium, to the currently depressed price ... 25 cents minimum I would think given the size of OIP's acreage (and the progress since floating and the fact that the flaot was at 20 cents).
OIP was spun out of ESG with a float of 100m shares at 20 cents in December 2007 to raise capital to drill a number of cenventional oil targets that ESG could not at the time fund and so that ESG could focus totally on CSG (ESG retained 23% of OIP and has farmed into the CSG plays and will end up with 50 - 75% of CSG rights). I tend to think that the merger that was proposed would have been ESG reclaiming OIP. This would explain what seemed at the time inexplicable .. that they would drill Kurrabooma in an area with no seismic and no known prospects ahead of the very prospective PEL 6 targets. Seemed at the time that they (ESG as the dominant partner in the drilling campaign) were wanting to keep OIP off the radar long enough to recalim it cheaply. Probably just speculating really but it did seem strange.
Interesting times .. I wonder if we will actually have to wait until the AGM or whether with new managemnt a move might happen much sooner?
H
OIP Price at posting:
13.0¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
